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Kawahigashi Hekigotō (河東碧梧桐) (1873-1937)

original name Kawahigashi Heigoro  Japanese poet who was a pioneer of modern haiku. Kawahigashi and his friend Takahama Kyoshi were the leading disciples of Masaoka Shiki, a leader of the modern haiku movement. Kawahigashi became haiku editor of the magazines Hototogisu (“Cuckoo”; in 1897) and Nippon (“Japan”; in 1902), and he published two books of commentary, Haiku… 

Japanese poet who was a pioneer of modern haiku. association with Takahama Kyoshi Through his friend Kawahigashi Hekigoto, he became acquainted with the renowned poet Masaoka Shiki and began to write haiku poems. In 1898 Takahama became the editor of Hototogisu, a magazine of haiku that was started by Shiki. He and Kawahigashi, the two outstanding disciples of Shiki, became pitted against each other after Shiki's death. 

Hekigotou kawahigashi was born 5th son to father, Kon Kawahigashi (his pen name was Seikei), a samurai belonged to feudal domain of Matsuyama, and mother, Sei (her second name was Takemura). His real name was "Heigorou". In 1887 (Meiji 20), he entered Iyo Ordinary Junior High School. He was in the same class with Kyoshi Takahama. Hekigotou was taught baseball by Shiki when Shiki came home in 1887 (Meiji 20). Shiki had been asked to hand a ball to Hekikotou by Hekigotou's elder brother, "Kitou" who was Shiki's schoolmate. Hekigotou had been concerned with Haiku taking advantage of this matter. He became the selector of the Haiku column of Newspaper "Nippon", but he changed his style into "the new trend of Haiku" and made this tendency stronger through a tour of the whole country. He made up the records of this travel into "Sanzen-ri - Three southands of miles". As times went on, he had been opposed to Kyoshi's conservatives. He retired from the Haiku world at his 60th birthday in 1933 (Showa 8). He died in 1937 (Showa 12) at the age of 65. His grave was located in the precinct of his father, Seikei's Houtouji Temple in Nishiyama, Matsuyama. Ehime University Library

While at middle school, Kyoshi was in the same class as Kawahigashi Hekigoto and the two became disciples of the poet Masaoka Shiki. In 1897, the publisher Yanagihara Kyokudo brought out a new haiku magazine, Hototogisu, in Matsuyama, Shikoku, and Shiki became the literary editor, assisted by Kyoshi and Hekigoto. The following year, Kyoshi took over as editor and moved the magazine to Tokyo. He expanded the scope of Hototogisu to include waka poems and prose, so that it became a general literary magazine. This was where Natsume Soseki’s "Wagahai wa Neko de aru" (tr I Am a Cat) was first published and Kyoshi himself contributed stories and novels. After the Shiki’s death in 1902, Hekigoto began to move towards the "shinkeiko haiku" (new trend haiku), which ignored the traditional meter and seasonal words, while Kyoshi renewed his interest in orthodox haiku Kamakura GreenNet

After Shiki’s death in 1902, haiku was divided into two main schools. Takahama Kyoshi insisted that haiku must be 17-on in a traditional 5-7-5 pattern (‑on are the phonemic sounds which are counted in Japanese haiku) with one traditional kigo, while by contrast, Kawahigashi Hekigotô (1873-1937) allowed free-rhythm and formal variation in haiku. Both schools continued to develop through the decades, however the style promoted by Kyoshi became more popular. New Rising Haiku: The Evolution of Modern Japanese Haiku and the Haiku Persecution Incident, Itô Yûki, Red Moon Press, 2007, ISBN 978-1-893959-64-4

In 1931, at the beginning of the Fifteen Years War, the haiku poets of Hekigoto’s free-verse school, including Kuribayashi Issekirô (1894-1961), joined the stream with his magazine Haiku Seikatsu (Haiku Life). Due to the mutuality and simpatico of the free-rhythm (jiyûritsu) school, the burgeoning movement was much enlivened. Taken as a whole, the new poetic styles represented by these magazines came to be known as the New Rising Haiku (shinkô haiku), one of the most significant origins of gendai haiku. [ibid.]

With Kyoshi and Shiki, in 1896 he wrote the renku Kusa no Iori (Thatched Cottage), published in Mori Ōgai's journal Mezamashigawa